Amid a growing sense of disenfranchisement, young people in Taiwan and Hong Kong are increasingly angry and want their governments to pay more attention to them, two panelists told a conference on democracy building in Taipei yesterday.
Speaking during a panel on majority and minority rights in government at the “Democracy Building in Interesting Times” conference organized by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the Heritage Foundation and Institute for National Policy Research, Alan Leong (梁家傑), a pro--democracy activist and one-time contender for the post of Hong Kong chief executive, said that while about 60 percent of people in Hong Kong support full democracy, its advocates remain the minority in the Legislative Council.
“Functional constituencies” representing the interests of conglomerates, big business and other small groups, as well as interference by Beijing, ensure that these legislators are forever in the opposition, said Leong, leader of the Civic Party.
That system, he said, gives those “vested powers” de facto veto powers and ensures that the “fruits of economic success” are not shared evenly and remain in the hands of the few.
Leong also said that in light of the proposed electoral models for the elections of chief executive and the Legislative Council in 2017 and 2020 respectively, “there is practically no way that Hong Kong can see universal and equal suffrage” applied during the vote.
Speaking of the deficiencies in the system, Leong said: “It is indeed a coincidence that the Hong Kong people comes to expect so much from the opposition parties in a system where the opposition is supposed to be irrelevant and ineffective.”
“This is not what the designer of our political system had in mind,” he said.
Speaking along the same lines, Parris Chang (張旭成), professor emeritus of political science at Pennsylvania State University and president of the Taiwan Institute for Political Economic and Strategic Studies, said that although in his opening remarks Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) highlighted the need for legislative oversight of the executive, the rules of the game continued to be made by the governing party.
“Wang, for example, fought really hard for a review of the -Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement [ECFA],” Chang said, “but the Executive Yuan did not allow the legislature to fully review it.”
“Wang said the ruling party should respect the minority, but the government wants the minority to obey the majority,” Chang said.
“I know Wang is a democrat, but his powers are limited,” Chang said, adding that he “worried very much about his [Wang’s] future.”
This imbalance in power, he said, stemmed from the remnants of a Leninist system from which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) emerged.
By breaking his vow not to become party chairman, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) accrued tremendous power, which now allows him to appoint KMT legislators who will toe the party line and ensure his policies are implemented, Chang said.
Both Leong and Chang agreed that the younger generations were frustrated and wanted the government to pay more attention to them.
In Taiwan’s case, Chang said, the benefits of economic -recovery and the ECFA have not trickled down to ordinary Taiwanese, while entry-level salaries for university graduates are far too low for them to afford buying a house.
As a result, he said, the KMT has become worried because young people are deserting the party and voting for the Democratic Progressive Party.
In Hong Kong, Leong pointed to the emergence of the “post-80s” generation, people in their 20s and early 30s who are calling for more political engagement and don’t want power to be limited to a few conglomerates.
Asked whether the “post-80s” generation identified more as Chinese or Hong Kongese, Leong said there was “no question” that they viewed themselves as Chinese, adding that the majority cherished the “one country, two systems” model as a means to secure Hong Kong’s special identity.
On Taiwan’s role as a model of democratization for China, Leong said Taiwan was in an ideal position to help, as it “is part of the country [China].”
“Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) cannot say that Ma is a busybody trying to interfere with the People’s Republic of China’s domestic politics,” Leong said, adding that similar calls by US President Barack Obama, for example, would have far less traction as they came from an external element.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400